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Sunday, July 3, 2011

Question: Have you Heard Joey Lawrence's "Rolled" ?

by Amy K. Bredemeyer
Joey Lawrence, long noted for his roles on Blossom, Brotherly Love, and many other television shows and movies, is releasing a new album in August. You may remember his earlier works, though it's been more than a decade since he recorded something new. Plus, his current show Melissa & Joey just returned to the air last week on ABC Family. Last week I had the opportunity to take part in a Q&A with Joey Lawrence, and wanted to share what I found out about his new album, the return of the show, and what else is going on for him.

If you want to read about earlier interactions with Joey Lawrence, check here and here. And be sure to listen to his new single, "Rolled," which is available on ABCFamily.

First, about Melissa & Joey:

- There's an upcoming episode where Joe has to speak quite a bit of Japanese. He had a teacher and listened to tapes for three or four days to learn it and pick up the inflections of the language.

- If you remember, Joey also wrote Melissa & Joey's theme song, which only had a few seconds of play with the first set of episodes. Now, you can hear a good 25-30 seconds of it.

- He sees Joe Longo as a little bit Bruce Willis, a little Alex P. Keaton. Both Joe and Joey are a little OCD, they love to cook, they're big sports guys.

- One of my questions asked him if he had any favorite scenes coming up. He replied that there's a great scene with his brother Andrew coming up where Andrew (a guitar player and teacher) plays a song that's really funny. Another is where Joe is considering moving out of Mel's house and the two have a heart-to-heart about it. There's another scene with Joe and Lennox where Joe acts as a big brother to her when he's in the car with her and she's headed to a sleepover.

- He's a huge fan of Danny DeVito and would like to have him guest on the show.

About his music:
- His new pop album coming out next month. The first single, "Rolled," is available for a free download on ABCFamily.com until Wednesday, and it will be released for iTunes and TuneCore and everywhere else on July 6th. He'll go on tour next year as well. The album was fan-driven because he's been tweeted a lot about doing more music. "The whole record is sort of a feel-good record."

- "Rolled" was an expression that Joey and his friends used to throw around in their mid-20s, because it's tough to find good ladies/guys out there. You have to figure out if a girl is in it for the real thing or if she just wants the big diamond and big house. So, "did that girl just roll you?" came about because a girl would use a guy and dump him when a better offer came along. The song is about a guy who is into a girl who sort of rolled him, and he knew he should have listened to his friends but she was just so hot. It's one of the edgier songs on the album.

More about Joey Lawrence:- He gets asked to do the "whoa" from Blossom pretty much every day. He has no problem with the fact that people still want to talk about it; he finds it "kind of cool." After all, "it was a fun, amazing time [in his] life."

- He's been in talks with Disney about being a voice in an animated feature film.

- Joey's done a lot of voicework over the years (he was Oliver in Oliver & Company, for instance), and he does voices from everything from Sesame Street to Cars 2 for his daughters.

- He's still not where he wants to be in his career. He wants to go to feature films and the fact that those opportunities are starting to present themselves is exciting for him. There are a lot of ups and downs and it's really about "celebrating the 400 no's on that journey to find the one yes."

- last time I spoke with him, Joey Lawrence said that he liked to cook "baked salmon with a little bit of mushroom couscous stuff and roasted cranberries on top." This time, he mentioned that some of his favorite things to make were Italian stuff, fish, baked manicotti, stuffed shells, vegetable lasagna, and lemon dijon chicken with risotto.

- If an opportunity comes up for him to write a cookbook, he might. There was also a vague reference to the fact that Joe Longo will write a cookbook on the show.

- He'd write a memoir, but not until his eighties, if he's lucky enough to get there.

- He's a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, then news and sports.

- As far as the Disney parks go, he's a fan of Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan, plus Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain. He also got married in Disney World!

- He loves Sword in the Stone and thinks that it'd lend itself to a fantastic live-action movie.

- - - That's it for this time! Another thank you to ABC Family & New Media Strategies, and especially Joey Lawrence! (if you're not already following him on Twitter, here he is!)